M HKA Ensembles

Installation, 40 x 60 x 60 cm.

Collection: Courtesy Annie Gentils Gallery.

“Weg Ten Hemel I plays with the dialogue between the profane and sacred. […] The starting point was an old book in Flemish, Weg ten Hemel (The Way to Heaven), which fell open at a page titled ‘Litanie van de Heilige Engelen’ (Litany of the Holy Angels). The shape of the open-faced book determines the dimensions of the truncated, white gesso pyramid into which it is inserted face down – a form which plays with art historical references, like Piero Manzoni’s socles and, perhaps more pertinent to our argument here, the Renaissance paintings in which a material weight, or earth boundedness, is juxtaposed with the lightness of conceptual celestial space. The status of the book as an object of knowledge is, however, ‘on the block’ (an English expression derived from the days of execution by beheading), since a book that cannot be read has, like the spent Angel Making Machine, lost its head: it has been rendered impotent.” 

- Jane Fischer in the catalogue A Small Box of Air Trapped and Drawn, Ria Pacquée and Andrew Webb, Campo Santo, November, 1999.

After a painting by P. Delaroche: The Execution of Lady Jane.